Fine separation of protein isoforms with alternative development in two-dimensional electrophoresis

Earlier, we had developed a new two-dimensional electrophoresis procedure, which could show high resolution for tubulin microheterogeneity. The present study was conducted to characterize this electrophoretic method by comparing its resolution with the common two-dimensional electrophoresis of OʹFarrell. The results have shown that our method is superior to that of OʹFarrellʹs in the separation of proteins with close isoelectric points. Moreover, a further application was tested by using native-gel electrophoresis in the first dimension and isoelectric focusing (IEF) in the second dimension. This method provided useful information on protein components involved in intact protein.